The present invention relates to a semiconductor light emitting device, its manufacturing method, an integrated semiconductor light emitting apparatus, its manufacturing method, an image display apparatus, its manufacturing method, an illuminating apparatus, and its manufacturing method. More particularly, the present invention is suitable when it is applied to a light emitting diode using a compound semiconductor of a nitride III-V group.
A light emitting diode in which an n-type GaN layer is grown onto a sapphire substrate, a growing mask having a predetermined opening portion is formed onto the n-type GaN layer, a hexagonal conical n-type GaN layer having an inclined crystal plane which is inclined to a principal plane of the substrate is selectively grown onto the n-type GaN layer in the opening portion of the growing mask, and an active layer, a p-type GaN layer, and the like are grown onto the inclined crystal plane has been proposed as a semiconductor light emitting device (for example, refer to a brochure of International Publication No. 02/07231 (pages 47–50, FIGS. 3–9)). According to such a light emitting diode, propagation of through dislocation from the substrate side to the layers to form the device structure can be suppressed and crystalline performance of those layers can be improved, so that high light emitting efficiency can be obtained.
There has been known a technique such that a first thin nitride semiconductor film of an amorphous structure is formed onto a principal plane of a sapphire substrate whose principal plane is a (0001) plane, the film is monocrystallized by a solid phase epitaxial growth, a second thin nitride semiconductor film is vapor phase epitaxial grown onto the monocrystallized film, a mask which is made of a thin silicon dioxide film and in which a numerical aperture is equal to or larger than 50% and a shortest distance from an adjacent window is equal to or less than 100 μm, and which has a plurality of windows for exposing the surface of the second thin nitride semiconductor film is further formed onto the grown second thin nitride semiconductor film, and a microstructure of a nitride semiconductor is vapor phase epitaxial grown onto the second thin nitride semiconductor film exposed into the window portion (for example, JP-A-10-256151 (pages 3–4, FIGS. 1–7)).
However, the method of forming the light emitting device structure by growing the layers to form the device structure onto the inclined crystal plane as mentioned above has a problem such that steps are complicated because the creation of the growing mask, the selective growth, and the like are necessary.